The kind of person that looks at the world in a way that very few people can. This person looks at all the angles of any given situation and judges dispassionatly. This person is never understood, mainly because they think about things that could potentialy break the spirit of those around them. Many people do not like the philosopher. Always trying to find people to prove them wrong. Some people get rubbed the wrong way. But in reality they are just trying to find that person that can show them up mentally. This allows them to think more on a subject and improve there own understanding of something that they are curious about. In a constant state of learning. Always willing to listen. They love a challange and loath the simpleton. To be a philosopher is to carry the burden of the mistakes of the world. To sink under that burden that can never be cast away. But they do this willingly. They do this with love. They do this for you. Somebody has to question the things that nobody wants to question. So they do. They advance in practicality. Cold blooded at times but true. So next time you meet somebody that fits that description. Do not look at them with annoyance. Shake that persons hand. Have a deep conversation with them. Challange them. Challange yourself. You might not like what you hear but remember this. I promise you that the philosopher does not like what comes out of his mouth any more than you do.

The best kind of person. A person that just thinks about things, which then enables other people to do things.

Carpenter: I built a house.

Doctor: I saved a woman's life.

Scientist: I've designed the missle defense system our country uses.

Dumbass: I only measure direct contributions, and I fail to understand that it is possible for something to indirectly benefit society. I'm the kind of person that thinks that rebounds and assists are useless in basketball.

Philosopher: I am interested in a discipline that has given birth to democracy and other political theories, the natural sciences, psychology, and more recently, cognitive science. Without the work conducted in philosophy, a monarch could destroy the house that a carpenter built without any compensation, and the knowledge necessary to save a person's life or to build a missile defense system would have not likely occurred.

I use logic to reach conclusions that are either necessary, contingent, or contradictory (impossible). Computers and robotics would be impossible without my contributions to propositional calculus, first-order logic, temporal logic, and modal logic.

The only kind of person that actually knows what he or she is talking about.

Psychiatrist: You need medication because I believe you are mentally ill.

Philosopher: All because you believe I'm mentally ill doesn't mean I am. Isn't it just as possible that you're mentally ill believing that I'm mentally ill without any real scientific evidence to back it up?

The most dangerous sort of person. By means of intuition, thought, symbols, and words, a philosopher may build or destroy civilizations, all behind the scenes, unknown by those who end up using her ideas as everyday beliefs. The power of the philosopher, for good or ill, often lasts well beyond the grave, over centuries and millennia.

Philosophers aim at discovering truth. As truth is perspectival and has an historical aspect, no philosopher or philosophy captures all truth absolutely in all its possible nuances and applications. Many thinkers misunderstand this fact of reality and human finitude, while other schools have grasped it.

Those that don't understand the limited nature of human beings believe their philosophy is a complete system that explains reality absolutely, usually with disastrous consequences historically; those that do understand this create philosophies that are open-ended and admit that progress in understanding is possible over time, each generation adding and amending errors as needed.

"Hegel, an absolutist 19th c. philosopher who believed he had explained all of reality, influenced Karl Marx, who, in turn, believed his philosophy explained all of reality. In turn, Ayn Rand took Marx's philosophy and turned it upside-down and, just as absolutely, believed she had completely explained all of reality. All three philosophers have had a certain detrimental effect on history - Hegel influencing Nazism, Marx Communism, and Rand an authoritarian resurrection of Laissez-Faire Capitalism and worship of selfishness."